Alt Text:
Google photos on ios is literally a hostage situation. Remove key functionalities like copying an image or editing an image unless you give them full unrestricted access to your entire photo library. (The holy grail of surveillance capitalism data). Data extortion masquerading as a service.
I dont know that google even is the most convenient product for this anymore. The experience via google, microsoft, and amazon have all gotten so shitty that normal people I know are complaining about it.
Does iOS have per file permissions? I don't think you can blame Google for something the OS can't do.
That is not what "literally" mean lmao.
Just use FOSS software, nobody's pointing a gun at you. Pretty sure if a real hostage situation survivor reads this s.he will laugh wtf
This is iOS not Android. FOSS is nearly impossible to implement.
Well you know, if you buy a shovel you can't really complain if it doesn't cook rice.
Bad analogy, since the device provides the rice cooking, but only if it's rice supplied by Apple.
iRice
Yeah, iOS is nuts.
Transfer files over bluetooth? Best go buy an entire apple product because fuck internationally recognized standards.
Transfer music to the iPhone? Gotta download one of two programs, make an apple account, and sync your entire library. Apple doesn't support common formats such as FLAC? Go fuck yourself and convert your entire library for them.
Backup your phone to the cloud? Apple doesn't let you select how many backups are saved so you run out of storage and get an upgrade to apple storage program for only $5.99 every other month/phone update.
I thought google was bad with their tyranny of default but the iphone 16 pro max is the pinnacle of anti user and pro consumerism. I list that phone as it is the only apple phone I have used.
So yes. Both apple and Google are doing this shit. It's very bad at this point.
I'm genuinely considering getting Huawei with harmonyos as my next phone
Here am I, Gigachad, running LineageOS, PiHole and only using FOSS apps
So are you rolling your own cloud storage?
I am running Syncthing between my devices, which is enough for me. I wondered if I should in a Synology, but now that they went full enshittification that's not a question anymore.
I'm running gos on a pixel and rolling my own cloud with nextcloud on my server. Works great.
I'll look into nextcloud. What kind of hardware are you running it on? Any type of off-site backups?
I'm running it on a nearly decade old PC I used to use for windows and gaming back in the day. Before I ran it on the PC I ran it for several years on a raspberry pi 4 (8GB).
For offsite, I roll my own by keeping an (encrypted) hard drive stashed in my desk at work. I update it every couple weeks or so, which is fine for me.
Edit to add the PC is now running Ubuntu server, and in addition to nextcloud I run like 15 or so other services for myself and my family like
Navidrome (rips of all my old CDs and new ones I buy) Jellyfin (rips of all our DVDs) Radicale (caldav for calendar. Could do this with nextcloud but I wasn't running it for a bit there) Joplin server for my notes Mealie for our recipes Forgejo, my private gitforge
There's more but I can't think of them.
Man those are some great name drops, thank you. I literally have an outlined plan to write my own Mealie equivalent because I couldn't find anything that fit without selling me some bs service
By the way, where do you go to find these types of things anymore? Web search has been completely fubar for years
Yeah. Web search sucks these days. Here's where I find stuff:
Awesome Self Hosted is a list of all kinds of self hosted options broken down into categories. It's a great resource. I browse this pretty regularly to see if anything catches my eye.
The selfh.st email newsletter is also great. Weekly email with some self hosting news, new projects and projects that have updated.
And the Lemmy communities!
Similar situation with WhatsApp on Android: you can't share images or videos without giving the app full access to your entire filesystem. You also can't video or voice call without giving the app full phone permissions.
Other apps happily let you do all of those things. You can just Share an image from some other app. But nope, WhatsApp just refuses.
WhatsApp is awful with permissions. I couldn't find a way to use it without giving it access to all my contacts. I installed it on the work profile and uninstalled it as soon as I didn't need it anymore.
What if I just don't care, I grew up in the era of sending film off to be developed so I automatically don't take incriminating photos. Nor to I take pictures of secure sensitive information.
Man posting this has three photos of a stump he removed once, 10 photos of a trip to Spain and 3 selfies done by his niece
Wow, this is such a relevant take. It’s honestly frustrating how essential tools today are locked behind privacy trade-offs. We’re gradually being conditioned to exchange convenience for control—often without even realizing it. And the worst part? We normalize it, one app permission at a time.
At HappyOuting, we think about this deeply—not just in terms of digital tools, but how they shape our travel experiences too. We believe travel should reconnect you with Nature, not provide fuel for data pipelines. Whether it is about capturing a Himalayan sunrise or roaming down a quiet forest path, our philosophy views digital mindfulness as a way to ensure that memories are kept between them and not commoditized.
Because experiences should inspire, not extract. Freedom should feel like fresh air, not a feature hidden behind settings.
Grateful for posts like these that push the conversation forward. If you ever want to see how a travel collective can work with privacy-first values, feel free to visit us at HappyOuting.in 🌿
Let’s keep building spaces that are intentional, human, and free.
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
Related communities: